Book ~ "Crying for the Moon: A Novel" (2017) Mary Walsh

From Goodreads ~ Raised on tough love in St. John’s, Maureen is the second-youngest daughter of a bitter and angry mother and a beaten-down father who tells the best stories (but only when he’s drunk). If life at home is difficult, then school is torture, with the nuns watching every move she makes. But Maureen wants a bigger life. She wants to go to sexy, exciting Montreal and be part of Expo 67, even if it means faking her way into the school choir.

Finally achieving her goal of reaching Montreal, Maureen escapes the vigilant eye of Sister Imobilis and sneaks away, and over the course of a few hours, one humiliating encounter with a young Leonard Cohen and a series of breathtakingly bad decisions change the course of her life forever.

It's July 1967 and Maureen is a teenager living in St. John's, Newfoundland.  Expo '67 was held in Montreal and in the July of that year, Maureen manages to weasel her way onto the local choir because they were heading to Montreal to perform.  In Montreal, she and her friend, Carleen, are able to escape the nuns and party.  Carleen decides to stay in Montreal with a sleazebag she'd just met and Maureen heads back to Newfoundland.  Once home, she discovers she is pregnant, a situation her dominating mother (aka Sarge) takes care of.

Shortly thereafter Maureen is living with Bo.  Bo is abusive and is always viciously beating her up, whether they are sober or drunk.  He is eventually found dead and the police, knowing Bo and Maureen's history, look at her as the suspect.

I had high hopes when I started this book but it just kept getting more and more dreary and boring as it went on.  The writing could have been tighter so therefore the story shorter.  I felt there was a lot of information, details and rambling that wasn't needed.  I gave up when I got about three-quarters of the way in and skimmed to the end.  As a head's up, there is swearing, adult activity and violence.  I'm originally from Nova Scotia so it was fun to read the lingo that I haven't heard in years.

I didn't find any of the characters likable.  I couldn't find any sympathy for Maureen and the predicaments she had gotten herself into.  Growing up, her home life wasn't the best but she didn't do anything to better herself and rise above it when she got to be an adult.  She continued to wallow in it and let her upbringing beat her down.  I found it ridiculous that Maureen, who wasn't overly bright or motivated, would put herself in danger trying to find out who was responsible for Bo's death.  Her parents were awful and it was sad and unnecessary that a "retarded" older sister who her mother abused was part of the story.